You used to step onto the pavement

of your driveway and pause, 

your eyes clutching the stars. 

You had seen stars like these

in school, laying down under a silver dome

at a projected sky,

The Big Dipper, a lion, and a bear.

Those stars weren’t real,

but you knew that they were,

so you’d try to find them at night.

You don’t see these lights now.

Is it really because you can’t see them

or that you have forgotten to look?

During the day, there are no stars

but sometimes you see a sliver of the moon

with the white powder of a cloud,

crumbling in the blue sky.

You sit in your backyard and see

black birds with green.

A family of mourning doves, six, 

pulling seeds from mulch.

You are home and there is nowhere to go

but in your house and outside.

You sit in a lawn chair

and whistle,

Be be be be be doo doo doo doo doo

to a cardinal who echoes it back to you. 

You always hear the cardinal,

but it is not until now 

in your yard 

where you talk to each other

and she knows you’re watching.

What are birds

but flying stars

that you forgot to listen to?